A month with a Chromebook

Highlights

I’m still loving the lightweight nature of the device coupled with the long battery life.

Speed is something that I’m continually impressed by. Whether it’s screen-grabbing and editing an image or editing a spreadsheet, the device is coping much faster that my (more expensive) Windows 10 laptop.

Everything just works well together. What I mean is, moving from an android phone to a chrome desktop (see below) and my Chromebook is pretty seamless. Google has really tweaked the synchronisation across devices.

I’ve also been carrying my chromecast around do present over WI-FI Sure you can do this with other laptops but it feels more “chromey”

Finally, I’ve noticed I’m using my tablet less. Possibly because the chromebook is so light, I’m taking that everywhere instead.

Chromebook vs. Nexus 7 with keyboard

Challenges

The downside to the small device size means
Installing chrome OS on an old Dell PC

I’m hunching over more when I use the small keyboard and this has been giving me neck and back ache. I’ve partially off-set this by keeping a mouse with me but that’s extra baggage. In addition I’ve just converted an old Dell home PC to Chrome OS using CloudReady from neverware. So I now have a Chrome desktop and use the chromebook when out and about.

Offline content – technically Google Drive synchronizes documents to be available offline, and I’ve enabled Gmail offline too, but I find there are delays opening and editing docs.

Google Slides – while it’s fine for the creation of my own presentations, I’ve noticed a few compatibility issues when converting and editing PowerPoint. Surely we just need people to stop using PowerPoint 😉

To summarize, I’ve no regrets about the move to Chromebook and wish I’d done it sooner